Cato Daily Dispatch for October 2, 2001
Barr, Pilon To Look At Ashcroft ProposalsGun Sales Up After Attacks
Taiwan Wants To Buy U.S. Destroyers
Barr, Pilon To Look At Ashcroft Proposals
Individual rights do not necessarily have to be the first casualty of America's newly declared war on terrorism, said Roger Pilon, director of the Center for Constitutional Studies at the libertarian Cato Institute in a Washington Post article today.
"We don't necessarily have to have a trade-off of security for liberty," Pilon said. "It may turn out that we simply need to order affairs of government more smartly."
Pilon will chair a panel at 4 p.m. today at Cato headquarters, which will explore what, if anything, the federal government can do to protect citizens from terrorists -- and from those who would take away their rights in the name of waging war on terrorists.
The featured speaker, Rep. Robert L. Barr Jr. (R-Ga.), is often outspoken. Barr is expected to offer a "skeptical" critique of Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's wish list of changes, such as proposals that would make it easier for federal agents to tap into voice mail and e-mail messages and eavesdrop on cell phone conversations. Also on the panel are journalist Stuart Taylor, Solveig Singleton of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and law professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University.
Pilon acknowledged that the individual rights vs. security issue is tricky for Cato's libertarian-leaning thinkers. Libertarians like their government small and unintrusive. And Pilon said virtually every major war fought by the United States has been marked by state-sanctioned rights abuses and government growth.
"But we also believe that the first premise of government is to protect us from threats at home and abroad," Pilon said. "What we have here is a monumental government failure to do the basic thing that we create government to do: protect our rights."
"We need to figure out exactly why this failure occurred," he said, and whether proposals such as Ashcroft's will actually help track down terrorists, or merely infringe on the rights of average Americans. "Was it that federal agencies couldn't talk to each other because of privacy laws, or that they didn't talk to each other because of bureaucratic inertia? There's a difference there, and it's an important difference."
Today's forum, "Fighting Terrorism, Preserving Civil Liberties," can be watched live today at 4:00 p.m. EST on the Cato Web site.
Gun Sales Up After Attacks
Fear of suspected terrorists living in their communities and the threat of more attacks caused a surge in gun sales in the days after Sept. 11, according to The Washington Post. Many of the buyers, dealers and experts say, are buying firearms for the first time.
Applications to buy handguns in Maryland more than doubled during the week of the attacks. The Virginia State Police, which conducts background checks on those who seek to buy handguns, rifles and shotguns, said the checks were up 32 percent the week of the attacks. The sale of handguns is essentially banned in the District, and sales of rifles and shotguns are highly restricted.
Nationally, the FBI, which conducts instant background checks on firearms sales in 25 states, said the number of applications increased 15 percent above normal from Sept. 11 to Sept. 13.
In "Fighting Back: Crime, Self-Defense, and the Right to Carry a Handgun," Jeffrey R. Snyder shows that crime-rates are reduced in states that adopt concealed-carry laws.
Last year, the Cato Institute hosted a book forum featuring legal scholar John R. Lott, Jr., author of "More Guns, Less Crime." The updated edition of his book presents the most comprehensive analysis ever done on crime statistics and right-to-carry laws. Video of the forum is available on the Cato Web site.
Taiwan Wants To Buy U.S. Destroyers
Taiwan's military said today it wants to buy four destroyers from the United States, warships that could greatly complicate any plans China might have to blockade or invade the island, according to the Associated Press.
The military has spent months debating whether to buy the Kidd-class destroyers, decommissioned by the U.S. Navy about three years ago. Some lawmakers have opposed the deal, arguing the vessels are designed for oceangoing combat missions, not the coastal fighting Taiwan would likely engage in with China.
But Taiwan's Defense Ministry spokesman Huang Suey-sheng told reporters Tuesday the military decided the guided-missile destroyers would "meet the battle needs" of the navy, which has been desperate to expand its small, aging fleet.
In "Increase Arms Sales To Taiwan," Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies Ted Galen Carpenter writes that rather than providing Taiwan with a firm security guarantee, "the United States should increase arms sales to Taiwan and encourage other countries to do the same." In "Taiwan: Not Worth War, But Well Worth Arming," Senior Fellow Doug Bandow writes that Taiwan has "earned the goodwill of Americans but not the blood of U.S. soldiers in a conflict. The U.S. should instead assist the Republic of China in developing a military capable of deterring aggression from across the strait."